Setting Up New Website in IIS

Setting Up New Website in IIS

Setting up a new portal

This assumes that you've installed SQL, set up a blank database, installed IIS, downloaded and unblocked and unzipped the DNN install version somewhere and you are ready to set up a website.

1. Copy the all the unzipped DNN files and folders to a folder in the the wwwroot folder of your IIS installation.

2. Give Network Service full permissions to the folder. Right click on the website folder then select Properties on the menu.

3. Click on the Security tab.

4. Look to see if Network Service is included in the list of users. If not, click on Edit.

5. Click on Add

6. Type in 'Network Service' in the dialog box, then click on Check Names. If the name is in the user list, the name will become underlined. Click on OK.

7. Check Full Control for Network Services user. Click OK.

8. Click OK.

3. Open IIS

4. Right-click on the IIS server name then click Add New Website from the menu that appears.

The following dialog box will appear.

5. Enter the name of your website in the dialog box.

6. Enter the name of a new AppPool or select the name of the AppPool from the dropdown list. The 'default AppPool' may be okay, but you can find out more about setting the AppPool here. The AppPool must be set to use '.NET Framework 4.0', have pipeline mode set to 'Integrated', and have 'Identity' set to 'Network Services'. I created an AppPool named 'dnn AppPool' that I use for my local DNN portals.

7. Click on the ... box next to the Physical Path dialog box and browse to the physical location of the website folder. Highlight the folder and click OK.

8. The logical thing to do after entering the first parts of the data is to click 'Test Settings'. Expect an error message! I've NEVER gotten a successful settings message with any combination of settings I've tried.....even though the site works fine. I just click Close and move on. If you want to try and troubleshoot, you're on your own.

9. If you don't enter anything in the Host Name box, you will be able to access your website by browsing to localhost/sitename.
** Because I intended to use Evotiva DNNBackup to clone my local site to a production sever, I made modifications in the host file which would make the local site compatible with the cloning procedure. To see how and why this was done, you can check out this page.

In my case, the following modifications were made in the hosts file.

As a result, I entered vnwweb.local in the Host Name box and I access my local website by browsing to vnwweb.local instead of localhost/vnwweb. For this to work, you have to modify the 'hosts' file. To see how this was done, check out this page.

At this point, you should be ready to browse to your website and do the DNN administrative setup by following the prompts.